Invisible Cities

Since the post below, news readers and even the general public will know, there have been some developments . . . Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi is now being widely pilloried for saying at Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday the same thing he said in 1980 at the beginning of Reagan's presidency, and in 1992 and 1994 and 1998 and who knows when else.

I have to shift metaphors here. It's no longer a matter of zipping up the open fly, since when that happens you have some hope of recovering without too many people noticing something pale and limp in view. Now (to move to something less gross) we have a number of conservative Republicans calling openly or moving behind the scenes for Lott to step down. That includes Dubya, who spoke up against racism yesterday, in his usual forceful and forthright terms--but calling for nothing to be done, of course. I'm unsure what to use, however--is it pulling a decayed tooth? Amputating a limb? Cleaning up the cat's vomit from the livingroom rug?

What interests me here is the role of weblogs in this aspect of the news cycle--not necessarily ordinary persons' weblogs, like this one, so much as those done by news vets who get wider visibility. Paul Krugman in today's NYTimes credits Joshua Micah Marshall's Talking Points Memo for doing a lot of the spade work about Lott. (Note how glacial the mainstream media were for a few days on this one--the initial Post story on Dec. 6 was fairly well inside.)

Good assessment from Talking Points Memo:

Consider the fact that right now we're debating whether the Republican Senate Majority Leader is a racist who yearns for the days of segregation or just a good ole boy who says a lot of things that make it seem like he's a racist who yearns for the days of segregation. I think you can say that that's a debate the Democrats are pretty comfortable having. And it'll keep being that way. Republicans are starting to realize that.

Krugman and Marshall point to resonance as a concept here: the reason this story is beginning to have legs is that a) Lott just repeated what he said before, b) there are enough items in the news to make the Republicans' racist tendencies visible (Supreme Court on cross-burning as free speech, Repub. political strategists' attempts to suppress AA voter turnout, wider attention paid to wingnut judges), c) Democrats' dawning awareness that they will get nowhere by lying low and hoping that the general public will notice the chasm between Dubya's rhetoric and his (staff's) actions. On this last point, I think it likely that the Dems will try a version of the Repubs' strategy re Clinton--start throwing mud and hope some of it sticks--except that in his case the "mud" is actual fact rather than hyperbole.

What interests me is the role of blogs in all this--with "blogs" being generously interpreted to include not only the likes of Marshall and Andrew Sullivan Andrew Sullivan and Mickey Kaus, but also the non-news ones. I need to read more widely and watch l'affaire Lott develop.

In support of blogs' role in all this, one of Sullivan's readers makes the case:

What is amazing is how many articles are now popping up saying "oh, yeah, he also said this in 1983." "Look what he said in 1981." "In 1992 he said the following about Bob Jones." "In 1978 he did this." And so on. The thing is that these are not new stories! These have been around - Trent's reputation has probably been known for some time. But nothing sustained has ever happened, even though quite a few people have probably known very well that one of the more powerful Senators was a segregationist in his heart.

But this story gets out on the blogs - I think you and Josh Marshall have been leading the discussion - and now it is impossible to stop. The blogs give legitimacy to the other papers. They create the momentum, and the big boys can jump on. Do you think that the NY Times would be running articles on this if InstaPundit had not? The research that the blogs have dedicated to this story has been amazing - every hour, someone has an excellent point to make about Lott, and every blog point is another drip in the bucket, so to speak. I have been a fan of blogs for a while now, but I have not seen a story happen around the edges of the major media like this one has. Strangely, this could be a watershed moment for the world of blogging. Not because they have done everything in the story, but because they sustained the momentum when the major dailies could not, or would not.

This as part of a pitch for financial support. Note, however, that the major dailies have advertisers, and their reporters also can expect to be smacked down or at least called a major-league asshole if they cross the Prez too much. In terms of blogs, if he notices them at all, Lott must think he's being pecked to death by ducks.

I'll come back to blogs' political leanings and effects sometime later.




glt 08:20 - [Link]
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I love these moments when the truth slips out. We can expect these things to happen at certain moments: one is the low point in the news cycle, Friday afternoon or evening, when news coverage is low, people are looking ahead to the weekend, and our leaders think we aren't paying attention. Another is the low point in the biennial cycle, just after elections, when the least damage can be done by conceding by actions taken what everyone knew all along.

Case one: W fires two figures responsible for the public face of his fiscal policy, Paul O'Neill and Lawrence Lindsey (registration required--pop-ups on P. 1). Lindsey would be known only to reporters and others who pay really close attention to White House staffing. Articles say he was responsible for crafting a Unified Message, and for some reason (probably that the economy is going down the toilet) he hadn't managed to do that. He was also responsible for saying that the coming war with Iraq would cost the US government somewhere around $200 billion, at a time when W hadn't admitted (wink, wink) that we would be going to war, no matter what Saddam did (does anyone doubt this?).

O'Neill tended to stray off-message, too, most notably in his Africa trip with Bono to show a little compassionate conservatism. Mostly I think he has to fall on his sword because W wants to show that he is concerned about the possibility that a three-year recession might limit the possibility for his beloved tax cuts for the very rich / damage his re-election chances.

The Bush family is always big on others being loyal to them, but they are loyal in turn to big donors and the awl industry, IMO.

The other newsworthy item this week is the Esquire article--excerpts onlyon the intensely and exclusively political nature of W's White House. Cf. also the comments by John DiIulio from his letter to the reporter, Ron Suskind. Excerpts:
The letter was a key source of Suskind's story about Karl Rove, politics and policymaking in the Bush administration, "Why Are These Men Laughing," which appears in the January 2003 issue of Esquire. On Monday, December 3, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said that the charges contained in the story were "groundless and baseless." After initially standing by his assertions, DiIulio himself later issued an "apology." Esquire stands strongly behind Suskind and his important story.
Besides the tax cut, which was cut-and-dried during the campaign, and the education bill, which was really a Ted Kennedy bill, the administration has not done much, either in absolute terms or in comparison to previous administrations at this stage, on domestic policy. There is a virtual absence as yet of any policy accomplishments that might, to a fair-minded non-partisan, count as the flesh on the bones of so-called compassionate conservatism.
In eight months, I heard many, many staff discussions, but not three meaningful, substantive policy discussions.
The most lingering sound-bite from the carefully reasoned and balanced letter (in which he offers a lot of praise for W as a well-meaning, warm person) concerned the Mayberry Machiavellis?staff, senior and junior, who consistently talked and acted as if the height of political sophistication consisted in reducing every issue to its simplest, black-and-white terms for public consumption, then steering legislative initiatives or policy proposals as far right as possible. These folks have their predecessors in previous administrations (left and right, Democrat and Republican), but, in the Bush administration, they were particularly unfettered.

As I said at the top, I'm particularly interested in these moments when the truth plops out of the fly for all to see. While the WWHouse is far from the first to run on PR, it's the first to be exclusively devoted to PR, so much so that politics trumps every other consideration.

Oh, yeah, I forgot what I wanted to post about in the first place. As reported in the Washington Post, Trent Lott, speaking at the 100th birthday celebration for Strom Thurmond (a.k.a. "The Strom of the Century," though I don't know what other Stroms would contend for that title), said the US would have been a much better place had he won the presidency in 1948. This in full knowledge, I assume, that what Thurmond was running on in 1948 was Segregation For-evah! "I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either." Bill Kristol was trying to get the GOP fly zipped up again: William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, said "Oh, God," when he learned of Lott's comments. "It's ludicrous. He should remember it's the party of Lincoln," referring to Lott's role as Republican leader of the Senate, which the GOP will control when the new Congress convenes next month.

Lott's spokesman took part in the damage control thus: "Senator Lott's remarks were intended to pay tribute to a remarkable man who led a remarkable life. To read anything more into these comments is wrong."

Bonjean declined to explain what Lott meant when he said the country would not have had "all these problems" if the rest of the nation had followed Mississippi's lead and elected Thurmond in 1948.

In 1998 and 1999, Lott was criticized after disclosures that he had been a speaker at meetings of the Council of Conservative Citizens, an organization formed to succeed the segregationist white Citizens' Councils of the 1960s. In a 1992 speech in Greenwood, Miss., Lott told CCC members: "The people in this room stand for the right principles and the right philosophy. Let's take it in the right direction, and our children will be the beneficiaries."

Asked to comment on Lott's remarks at the Thurmond celebration, Gordon Baum, CEO of the Council of Conservative Citizens, said "God bless Trent Lott."

Yes, indeedy. Sto lat (stow Lott?).






glt 07:29 - [Link]
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